Yasin, I;
Drga, V;
Plack, CJ;
(2014)
Effect of human auditory efferent feedback on cochlear gain and compression.
J Neurosci
, 34
(46)
15319 - 15326.
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1043-14.2014.
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Abstract
The mammalian auditory system includes a brainstem-mediated efferent pathway from the superior olivary complex by way of the medial olivocochlear system, which reduces the cochlear response to sound (Warr and Guinan, 1979; Liberman et al., 1996). The human medial olivocochlear response has an onset delay of between 25 and 40 ms and rise and decay constants in the region of 280 and 160 ms, respectively (Backus and Guinan, 2006). Physiological studies with nonhuman mammals indicate that onset and decay characteristics of efferent activation are dependent on the temporal and level characteristics of the auditory stimulus (Bacon and Smith, 1991; Guinan and Stankovic, 1996). This study uses a novel psychoacoustical masking technique using a precursor sound to obtain a measure of the efferent effect in humans. This technique avoids confounds currently associated with other psychoacoustical measures. Both temporal and level dependency of the efferent effect was measured, providing a comprehensive measure of the effect of human auditory efferents on cochlear gain and compression. Results indicate that a precursor (>20 dB SPL) induced efferent activation, resulting in a decrease in both maximum gain and maximum compression, with linearization of the compressive function for input sound levels between 50 and 70 dB SPL. Estimated gain decreased as precursor level increased, and increased as the silent interval between the precursor and combined masker-signal stimulus increased, consistent with a decay of the efferent effect. Human auditory efferent activation linearizes the cochlear response for mid-level sounds while reducing maximum gain.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Effect of human auditory efferent feedback on cochlear gain and compression. |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1043-14.2014 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1043-14.2014 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2014 Yasin et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed. |
| Keywords: | cochlear, compression, efferent, gain, masking, neural, Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Auditory Perception, Cochlea, Efferent Pathways, Feedback, Physiological, Female, Hearing, Humans, Male, Olivary Nucleus, Perceptual Masking, Young Adult |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1462178 |
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